


Rituals

by alydjarins



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Heavy Angst, Ladynoir | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Romance, Secret Relationship, secret dates-that-aren't-actually-dates, thank you very much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:20:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27776017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alydjarins/pseuds/alydjarins
Summary: Ladybug and Chat find a secret rooftop.Week, after week, after week, they return - and they can't seem to tear themselves away.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 10
Kudos: 57





	Rituals

**Week 1**

Chat called it their own little Neverland. Himself, Peter Pan.

Ladybug did not take kindly to being called Wendy. 

“C'mooon. It can’t hurt you to rest for _once_ in your life, m’lady. ...m’Wendy. Heh.”  
“Oh m– _honestly_ , Chat. Someone could see us up here. You wanna handle those press pictures, kitty?” 

“Hey. Look.” He laid a sharp, charcoal hand on her spotted shoulder. “How ‘bout we make it _just_ for after akuma battles? Only the worst ones, yeah? Look at the place, bugaboo.” 

Alright. It was cute. Chat had dusted up a rooftop sanctuary and carved it into something of his own: candles from a Serenade Past edged some foreign balcony, moonlight beaming a warmth-approved glow behind them. Streetlamps danced. Carhorns brayed. Below the cement, an alien and exotic life signaled its far-off tune.

“LB and CN,” Chat drawled. “Personal invitation only. Very top-tier, you know – you wouldn’t want to deny an RSVP. _All_ of Paris would talk.” He inspected a leather claw. “Bad press.” 

Ladybug giggled. “You're insufferable.”   
He winked. “Maybe. But you still trust me.”

Ladybug spied the coruscant flicker-flames bounce from dark iron banisters to his dark, tomcat veil. 

Always, somehow. She always did. 

“Yes, but...” 

“Let me handle it, then. Okay? I’ve got you, Ladybug. I _promise_.”

Something in the midnight chill must have swayed her.

“We’re test driving tonight,” she relented. “And _only_ for the worst battles.”   
  
“Only then.” 

He smiled brighter than the moon. 

**Week 2** ****

“Hey, Kitty. What’s on the conversation menu tonight?”

Yoyo twines and turns poised Ladybug onto Neverland Headquarters (LB and CN only, apparently). 

City blocks and cement corners had stashed away secret, post-akuma shifts those past few days. No more superheroes: just a lovesick boy, a loveshy girl. And then – extra spots on, sharpened claws out, sneaky little swings up to the oasis. _Their_ oasis. 

On its rooftop, now, Ladybug held the city’s worth of faux-feather blankets – mixes of red, splashes of black – and braced herself to shield Chat from the frosted autumn nip.

He kept quiet. She followed his gaze. 

“Uh… what are those?” Chat probed. 

Ladybug shrugged. “Just from back home.” He tossed her an expectant glance. “Ugh, they’re not identity-shattering, y’know. You don’t have to stare.” A nonchalant jerk and a tiny, tiny turn dressed the quilts over cold, hard cement. She nestled in to swathe herself in their heat, forging him a space to cuddle close beneath.

Nothing.

“C’mooon, _Peter Pan_ ,” she chuckled. “Tonight was rough. It can’t hurt you to be cozy for once in your life.”  
“You brought these? For me. For…”   
Ladybug curtsied a confirmation. 

Somewhere at the rims of Chat’s green-glint eyes, her dots reflected into welled-up water. 

He pretended it was the cold. 

She pretended to believe him.

**Week 4**

Sunsets were their favorite. 

Daylight was too bare; moonlight was too romantic. 

So, quietly, they’d settled on an in-between. 

Nightfall melted blushes onto their onyx and ruby silhouettes. Street lights twinkled in the urban ocean below. Paris pulsed its normal, busy tempo, finally abandoning its hunger for Ladybug and Chat Noir. 

The sunsets rose them above it all: just a loveshy girl in the clouds with a lovesick boy pirouetting her, night, after night, after night. 

No one owned them here. They only belonged to each other. 

(Masks and suits were just precautions.) 

**Week 6**

They talked about everything. 

They talked about nothing. 

At dusk, they played a game: _what exactly_ were those shadowy figures doing? In that cliquant apartment window, Ladybug and Chat could barely spy bodies twisting, melding, darting away the oceans of space between them. 

They seemed in love. 

Chat thought they might be dancing, so Ladybug hummed old, timeworn melodies into the air. 

“Record player at home?” he asked. “ _Pawsibly,_ kitty-kat,” she teased.

His shadowy gloves clinched at the blanket’s edge. She wondered why. 

At each next rendezvous, Chat would steer himself back with intimate Ladybug Lyrical Knowledge – enough for his own performance, at least. The figures waltzed, tangoed, swayed to his refrain. 

“How do you know all these songs?” she asked one night, curiosity killing her like the chat. 

Gloves again. Blanket. Clinch. 

“You…” A sigh, now. He was tired. Ladybug wondered if his black veil disguised darker circles. “You listen to the same records my mom used to.”

Oh. 

The blanket crumpled harder. 

Suddenly, a breeze blew, moonlight danced, and he let go. “And _duh_ , Bugaboo. How else do you think I feel so close to you when we’re so far each night?” 

This time, he smiled softer than stardust-glow.

Butterflies danced at Ladybug's center. She pretended it was the cold. 

**Week 8**

They touched more. 

Closer–  
The flow of an ebb–  
A little more each time. 

Implicit game rules decided where. 

First, as the swaying couple dragged closer, Chat curved a half-moon around Ladybug’s shoulder. Next, her side. (Mini-humming hymnals encouraged that one.) 

Pixie pigtails on _his_ shoulder happened by chance, through a fit of cackles and hysterics at his stupid-dumb pun. Ladybug abandoned any hopes of a masquerade then. Secretly, she let Marinette settle the next few nights.

Mini-humming mews from Chat – or whoever his own masquerade hid – encouraged that one. 

**Week 8 and a Half**

Ladybug had learned, by heart, the stitching tracts along Chat’s leathered ribs. 

Sometimes, sadness ached and pricked at his voice. She sketched a gloved thumbnail over the bulges of his bones, then: a proof of her presence at the cage of his heart.

It was his tonic. Far-away eyes warmed back up to the shore of her – she’d breathe the heart of a hot, moonlit glow into his shoulder, and Chat would breathe back love. 

Everything was suddenly okay again. 

**Week Always**

But that was it. That was always it. 

Starlight would rise, and off they’d go: two Parisian ghosts colliding, fragmenting into the night, ready for Hawkmoth to call them back and give them any excuse to be _here_. 

Rest. A ritual after battle. 

That’s all it was. 

**Week 9, Now:**

Doesn’t mean they have zero fun. 

“Rena Rouge! Carapace! Someone, anyone, _help_! There’s an evil Chat Noir on the roof and he’s trying to akumatize me! _Agh_!” 

“That’s right, little lady.” Flash flares of noir whip around giggling, tittering blurs of red. “And you better keep running, or else he might… **_POUNCE!_** ” 

“ _AHHH, NO!”_

He tackles her then, spinning arcs of her silly shrieks along the cement. They land in familiar territory: Chest to Chest, featuring the tune of glowed-up cheeks. 

“Nahaho– no… _more_ , you monster!” She whoops a little quieter now, half out of breath and half for secrecy’s sake, when he pokes and prods at her ribs. 

“What was that, m’lady? You wanted _more_? Well, anything to keep my bugaboo happy.” 

“ _I_ –!” 

Adoration spills through his fingertips. Ladybug, through her mirth-teary grin, can still see it surround him – them – in a hushed little bubble of their own design. 

Finally, he relents. She sighs a comedown. 

Static, heavy breath keeps them staring; neither can find it in them to move.

“Naughty kitty.” She taps his nose.   
“Lovely lovebug.”   
“ _T_ _hat_ was cheesy. What happened to all your Chat Noir wit?”   
“Oh, I don’t know. Might tend to get intimidated around pretty girls.” 

She smirks, nudging away his cheek as she elbows herself back onto the pavemented roof. Twilight sinks somewhere past the Seine. Chat mirrors her movements, her gaze, her everything. 

“Braid?” he asks, summoning the newest quirk of their ritual.  
“ _Duh_ ,” she coos, feather-punching a truce into his side. 

Ladybug is grateful to be facing the blaze of a sunset as Chat settles himself behind her. Now, all she has is sun-kissed – _very much not blushing_ – cheeks. She pries garnet ribbons from sapphire strands. 

“That cute couple’s back,” she notes, pointing to dotted shadows along their favorite windowsill. 

“We’ve already been here the whole time, m’lady.”

A soft pound on his thigh conjures back snickering _ow, okay, okay_ s. 

Chat hums a ditty for their friends and rakes crooked talons through Ladybug’s hair. At her forehead, he grazes the wisps of baby-hair hidden beneath bangs. 

The scene might be cute if she had a crush. 

The audience of her fluttering stomach would cry _encore, encore!_ when he scrapes low, jungle-baritone notes of his tune. (Serenade, maybe? She wasn’t sure.) Roses in her head might waltz as he weaves and untangles her strands. She may even shiver – down to the roots of her spine, the roots of their script – when his lingering nails prick goosebumps along her neck. 

But she doesn’t have a crush. 

So, none of those things happen. 

“Chat?”   
“Mmhm?”   
“I… you fit pretty nicely back there, you know.” 

Silence suspends itself along the edges of their aura. She hears him chuckle, then, as he teases tremors through her plaited hair. Criss, cross, criss, cross. 

“I keep telling ya, m'lady... meant to be.” Ladybug tunes her ears so the last whisper-transmission can reach them. He weaves more. The afterglow sinks a static buzz around her head. 

Criss, cross. 

“Chat?”  
Criss–   
“Mm?”  
Cross. 

“...Do you think we'll remember all of this?” 

The raking stops. Three fractions of her, maybe more, mourn. Ladybug peeks through her peripherals – just barely, as the car horns grow restless below them.

He looks worried.

“Ladybug, what are you…”

–No. She can’t. 

Her eyes dip to reds of an encroaching twilight instead. Chat scoots himself a little closer along the pavement, beside her now, giving them only a reverberated hum of space between their thighs. 

“What do you mean?” he asks. He is sincere, and urgent, and scared. Ladybug wishes he’d go back to singing. “Remember _what_?” 

She lingers.   
Moonlight sinks.

Marinette sees ghosts of him sometimes. Little synchronicity flashes and camera clicks develop overlays of Chat where he is not, where he shouldn’t ever be. 

When it happens – like when she needs pens on lazy, school day afternoons that wisp away akuma dreams, and Adrien turns to offer up familiarity and _home_ in the way his fingers clench around it – she feels natural, lovely, and sorry. Her stomach lurches. 

When it happens – like when she swears she sees dots reflect in the rim of green-glint eyes – she wonders if it’s a kind of soulmate sign. It’s funny, she thinks. Was it supposed to make her love him more? Hate Chat less? 

All at once, Marinette, Ladybug, who is she? feels dirty, doting, wretched, wed, and more in love than she’d ever been.

Lunar craters groan their ascent. Chat’s stuttered, waiting breath calls her back. 

“I don’t know. This. Us. We’ll have to give this up one day, Chat.”   
“No, no… no, m’lady–”   
“ _Chat Noir_.” 

The full name prickles his consciousness towards her. He is encompassed in the totality of her now. She pulls her knees into the cocoon of her own bubble, away from the future Chat she will one day abandon, who will one day abandon her. “We can’t stay like this forever,” she whispers. “We can’t… I can’t know who you are.” 

“But when Hawkmoth goes…”

“You and I both know that will be too late.” A side-eye surveys her damage. “I’ll have someone by then. So will you. A _family_.” 

She can see love warm and simultaneously drain his cheeks: the love he has yet to whisper secrets of to her beetle-bug veil, one he’s already sang to her Marinette-infused bare bones. Waves of guilt drown her like new, nervous friends. 

“A family?” 

“Yes, Chat Noir. We'll fall in love. Our real selves. Not our masks.”

“I… I haven't been wearing any mask with you, Ladybug.” 

She inhales something sharp. “What's your father's name, Chat?” 

“...What?”   
“You heard me. Where do you go to school?”  
“Ladybug, you know I can't–”   
“What's _your_ name, Chat? Where do you live? Where do you listen to those records at night?”   
He is frozen.   
“Who _are_ _you_?”

She pierces his ice wall with that. 

“Don't you get it?” Her voice – low and cold and gone – chokes through a broken, biting sob. “We can't keep doing this.”

Ladybug rips the braids from her hair. They are too tight, now, and stab at her scalp in ways that ache at her veins.

Chat breathes back something fractured.   
It hurts too much. 

“I'm sorry,” she sniffles.  
They hurt too much.

The couple in the window still dances. To any troubles of the world, they spin, they swing, they sway. Ladybug and Chat watch them through a death-hush of quiet. They're not sure what else to do. 

They sit like this until moonrise. 

Constellations breathe coruscant lights through their sky, and Ladybug, Marinette, who is she? who is he?– watches them flick along phantoms of his old candles. Somewhere, sometime near then, he lays a hand overtop of hers. He plants false seeds of eternal love: vows of a broken, bursting future between her fingers. Loose hair pricks at her eyes. She ghosts through visions of a boy crying to one lost mother, two lost loves. Her chest throbs.

She wants him more than anything.

Soft stars frame the cruel city they're bound to by loyalty; loyalty alone. 

Street lamps dim. Car horns dwindle. 

They should go. 

Neither can find it in them to move.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQU5nS8G7K8


End file.
